Fantastic! Great story, great effects, loads o' fun. And this is coming from someone who has never read an X-Men comic in her life. I'm not a comic book reader, though I am getting into graphic novels. I may eventually read an X-Men graphic novel, but I 'm not in any hurry. However, I really enjoyed this movie, not only for itself, but for the way it treats the X-men world as a given, a reality that we are invited to enter. The first movie set the world up for us, and the second wastes no time explaining things again. In this it's like The Lord of the Rings films: newcomers are given just enough information to get their bearings, but not coddled, and fans get lots of "insider" bits to keep them feeling happy and special. And that's cool. As an "outsider" to this X-men stuff, it doesn't bother me at all that I don't know all the "real" names of the X-kids. I'll get to know them, maybe in the next film, or the one after that.

There's tons of glowing reviews out there, so I'm just going to focus on my favourite part: the character of Nightcrawler. He looks cool, and his power are very cool, but more importantly, he's a fully realized person. He has a realistic backstory, he has a personality, and he grows in his understanding. I especially love that his faith is treated as normal for him, with no sense of him being considered strange, even if the others don't share or understand his faith.

Highlighting Nightcrawler doesn't mean I think the other characters were undeveloped. On the contrary, Nightcrawler is an example of what's best about this whole film: the characters are real people we care about even as we gawk at their bodies and their powers. Bobby trying to explain himself to his parents is wonderfully painful, and Professor Xavier's horror at Stryker's son is palpable. Director Bryan Singer has topped himself. Can he do it again? I pray he can.